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Fellow explorers, spelunkers, and other adventurers from a past that goes "beep",
Greetings !
For this second issue of BLEEPING RELICS, our research team examined
the dark and labyrinthine secrets of a hero, yellowed long before he suffered the ravages of time.
Behind the legend lies the myth,
beyond the myth, the truth lies.
And the sad truth is named PUCK MONSTER, and was released by LSI / Gakken in 1982.
Like its predecessor, PUCK-MONSTER regroups the main features that makes a good tabletop:
a colored and oversized shell, a VFD equally shimmering,
unreasonable consumption of 1.5V batteries
and a current price of around €30. Not to mention the absence of a "mute" function.
Of course, the bulky similarities do not end there. The most obvious and most shocking is that PAC-MAN
thinks He can go incognito, in this pale imitation of the success MIDWAY licensed two years earlier.
Even then, arcade game ports to handheld consoles weren't always that easy.
At first glance, however, the golden hull promises a better holding of controls than its competitors,
thanks to the joystick: single interface needed to control the protagonist
Apart from this single control, a switch selects the type of game (regular / difficult)
The game principle is fully modeled on PAC-MAN:
yellow circular protagonist, paranoid ectoplasmic enemies,
and a diet exclusively composed of white tablets.
Some of them, flashing, give the monster PUCK
temporary authority to engulf and digest his enemies instantly.
Some good ideas from the original concept transferred here with varying degrees of inspiration,
such as the tunnel in the center of the playing area
This allows the hero to disappear from one side of the maze,
to reappear on the other, spreading discord and confusion among his opponents.
Of course! Indeed! To achieve the maximum score of 9999
or swing the machine to the cat.
Note however, that one trait of genius which contributed to the worldwide spread release and success of PAC-MAN
was well lost among the workteam of LSI / Gakken GAMES.
Before being the devourer of pellets we know, PAC-MAN was called Puck-Man.
Some users have quickly pointed an imaginative finger that when you delete the loop of "P"
the title of the game takes another sense not really compatible with the target audience.
PUCK-MONSTER couldn't get away with it.
Symbolically, the labyrinth represents the psychic and spiritual path a hero must undertake within himself,
to discover its own truth, not only by reaching the center, but through the journey that lead to it.
Interpretations are many, but one thing is certain:
the truth of PUCK-MONSTER is a small rectangle of light as the origin for his enemies,
Several theories still divide the scientific community.
Some argue that PAC-MAN himself suffered a terrible addiction to flashing pills
forcing him to compromise his reputation by accepting second-rate contracts.
Others will say that the 80's were the ideal time
to change one letter in a famous name,
and by doing so, avoid being sued to court for plagiarism, forgery,
and thumb pain.